


The Isis Knot

by Lovejoy



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Forced Cohabitation, Forced Marriage, M/M, Soul Bond, Unromantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-06-26 07:04:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19763038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lovejoy/pseuds/Lovejoy
Summary: Jounouchi opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Oh, fuck no,” he said.“You’ll do it, because you don’t have a choice,” Kaiba said icily. “And neither do I. Unfortunately.”





	The Isis Knot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FleetSparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetSparrow/gifts).



He woke up on Yuugi’s couch, clutching his chest.

But it didn’t hurt, and for a disorienting moment, he didn’t know why it should. Then he turned his head and realized he was right next to Kaiba, who was sitting by the couch in a chair with his laptop open, pointedly not looking at him, and it all came back to him in a queasy rush: the amulet, the flash of light, the crippling pain when Kaiba had tried to walk away, and then darkness.

Well, good to know Kaiba’s own stubbornness hadn’t laid him out like it had Jounouchi. Prick.

“Where’s Yuugi?” he mumbled, sitting up.

“He went to go make a call.”

“To who?”

“Malik Ishtar. I’ve already spoken with his sister.”

Jounouchi frowned. “Well, what’d she say?”

“Nothing useful,” Kaiba said, and then motioned to a bag by the end of the couch. “Your little friend brought this for you.” He said _friend_ like it was some kind of foul, diseased word.

“Yuugi?” Jounouchi peered into the bag and saw a change of clothes and some toiletries, all of which must have been taken directly from his bedroom.

“No, the other one.”

Honda, then. Not even Bakura had been to his apartment, thankfully, and Anzu was still in New York, and would be for at least another year.

He checked his watch, saw the date, and paled. “It’s still Friday?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Shit,” he said. “Shit. My job.” Tanaka didn’t tolerate lateness, or excuses. He’d been given too many passes already; he he was on some seriously thin ice, and this might’ve broken it. Still, he had to try. He kneaded his temples, prayed for patience, and said, “Kaiba, I need to go talk to my boss—”

“No, you don’t,” Kaiba said irritably. “You won’t be working for Tanaka Keiji anymore. You have a new job now.”

Jounouchi suppressed the momentary flash of outrage—who the hell was Kaiba to boss him around like that—but then his brain caught up, and he blinked. “What the fuck do you mean, a new job?”

“Since it seems I can’t go more than ten feet from you without being incapacitated, you’re coming on as a member of my personal security team. You’ll need to fill out the paperwork to make it legitimate, so we have you on file, but assume you start now. Congratulations.”

Jounouchi opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Oh, fuck no,” he said.

“You’ll do it, because you don’t have a choice,” Kaiba said icily. “And neither do I. Unfortunately.”

“No choice, huh?” he said. “What if I choose not to sign your papers? What then?”

Kaiba’s mouth curled into a sneer. “Listen, deadbeat. I’m not going to follow you around your insignificant life like a dog on a leash. Unlike you, I run a multinational corporation. Hundreds of thousands of people rely on me. That embarrassingly third-rate job you held before this is forfeit; I’ll pay you much better than it ever did. It's the most mutually beneficial option for the both of us.” He leaned back. “So don’t be difficult.”

Jounouchi didn’t say that he was right, because he honestly would’ve rather punched himself in the face. The promise of a larger salary helped soothe the insult a little bit—but only a little. “You’re an asshole,” he said, and felt better.

“So I’ve been told. Sign these.” Kaiba reached into his briefcase and tossed a ream of papers at him.

Jounouchi glared down at them.

“Jounouchi!” 

His head swung around; Yuugi had come downstairs, his phone still in his hand. “You’re awake!” he said, rushing over. “Feeling okay?”

“Yeah. Better. What’d Malik say?”

“He said he’d look into it. But for now, you should do all you can to stay together, and not… aggravate things.” Yuugi tossed a wary glance over to Kaiba, who had returned to his rapid typing, and lowered his voice. “Kaiba told me the plan. I know it’s not ideal, but…”

“Nah, it’ll be fine.” Jounouchi plastered on a grin he didn’t remotely feel. “He’s gonna be paying me, so I won’t murder him outright, at least.”

Yuugi gave him a weak smile. “You know you can call and text me whenever, right? I’ll come see you, too. And I’m sure Kaiba-kun will let you visit.”

“He fuckin’ better,” Jounouchi said loudly. Kaiba didn’t acknowledge him.

Yuugi patted his hand. “We’ll fix this, Jounouchi-kun. I promise.”

Jounouchi wanted to believe him. It was easier to believe him.

So he signed the papers.

*

It was only as they were approaching Kaiba Mansion that Jounouchi realized their distance limit meant they would have to share a bedroom. He didn’t say anything, because Kaiba must already know, must have already accounted for every other repulsive thing about this situation; but it made his stomach turn over. He wouldn’t be sleeping in his own room, in his own home, for a long time.

Fuck.

So he said, “I have to call my dad.”

Kaiba didn’t answer him. He was flicking through his tablet, occasionally tapping something out on a projected Solid Vision keyboard, either utterly wired in to whatever he was doing or just wholly dedicated to ignoring Jounouchi’s entire existence. Fine by him. Jounouchi got out his phone. He didn’t want to have to do this in front of Kaiba, but at least he’d only be able to hear one side of the conversation; as long as he was polite, he wouldn’t suspect anything.

And there was a chance, however small, that his dad wouldn’t even pick up at all.

Jounouchi dialed. His dad picked up on ring three. So much for chances.

“Hi, Dad,” he said.

“Katsuya!” his dad slurred. “Where the hell are you?”

“I’m…” He darted a glance at Kaiba. “I’m out with friends. We’re celebrating my new job.”

“New job?” His dad snorted. “You got a new job? What kind of job? Where? Who’d take you?”

Jounouchi set his jaw and said, “Kaiba Corporation.”

His dad laughed a long, rough, hearty laugh. “Ha! You’re fuckin’ kidding me. No fuckin’ way they’d hire you. You’re a good-for-nothing punk kid, you didn’t even go to university! Hired by Kaiba Corporation; what a load of shit. Only thing they’d hire you for is to scrub the shit off the bottom of their fancy shoes. Don’t try to pull the wool over your old man’s eyes, Katsuya.”

“I’m not. I’m security. I start work in—uh, pretty much immediately.” He paused. “It’s a really intensive job, so I’m not gonna be home much.”

“Bullshit.” His dad’s tone lost its amusement and turned sour. “You stop lying and get your ass back home right now. What am I gonna do for dinner, eh?”

_Make it yourself for once_ , Jounouchi thought. “Order out? There’s a Thai place down the street.”

“With what fuckin’ money?” his dad roared. “If you got a new job, you should be able to send money, right? If you can’t make your poor father some dinner, the least you can do is pay for it!”

“I’ll send some when I have it,” Jounouchi said, tiredly, but he knew full well where the money would really go.

“Good,” his dad hissed. “Or you’re not gonna like the consequences. Now, get back here, and we’ll talk about how much you’re gonna give me upfront for lying.”

“I can’t, Dad, I told you. I’ll be back in a—” Fuck, when would this end? A week? A month? Tomorrow? “—soon.” 

“Don’t you dare disobey me, boy—” 

“I gotta go, Honda’s pouring out shots,” he said quickly. “I’ll call again later, bye!”

He hung up and then immediately turned his phone off so he wouldn’t have to see his dad calling him back to yell at him. Thankfully, Kaiba said nothing, and in fact didn’t seem to have been listening at all; that, or more likely, he simply didn’t give a shit. Jounouchi put his forehead against the cool tinted window and watched the scenery go by.

Five minutes later, they were pulling up the long winding driveway to Kaiba’s house, past the wrought iron gates, which closed automatically behind them, and up to the towering European façade. Kaiba got out and began striding toward the front doors, and then stopped abruptly, like he’d already forgotten he was beholden to a new set of rules. Jounouchi pushed the heel of his hand against his chest to soothe the ache and got out to follow after him, glaring.

“Hurry up,” Kaiba said, snippily.

“Slow down,” Jounouchi retorted.

When they entered the front doors, just as huge and lavish as Jounouchi remembered them, Kaiba was ambushed by his little brother—not so little, now—who hugged him and said, “Yuugi told me what happened. Are you guys okay?”

As a sixteen year-old, Mokuba had grown to Jounouchi’s height, which was weird enough. No longer having to look down at the top of his head was a strange experience—as was listening to his voice, which had dropped a solid octave. He looked and sounded like his brother more than ever before.

“Fine,” Kaiba said stiffly, in a way that plainly communicated how _not fine_ it was.

“Yeah, great,” Jounouchi said flatly.

Mokuba made a grimacing, apologetic face, which Jounouchi appreciated: they might have been brothers, but it wasn’t like Mokuba didn’t know how testy Kaiba could be, how he acted around people who weren’t his little brother.

“It won’t be for very long,” Mokuba said, mostly to Kaiba, who couldn’t have looked more displeased if someone had smashed a Duel Disk right in front of him. “Everything will work out.”

“God, I fuckin’ hope so,” Jounouchi muttered. “Where are we sleeping? I’m beat.”

“I have to work,” Kaiba said, and when Jounouchi’s narrowed eyes swung toward him, he added coldly, “You can sleep on the couch in my study.”

“What if I want to sleep in a nice warm bed, huh? Bring your laptop and work from there.”

“No,” Kaiba said, his voice sharp and uncompromising, and offered no further explanation.

_What do you mean, no?_ Jounouchi could have said; _fuck you and fuck your study, I want a bed._ But he was simply too tired to argue. At this point, he’d sleep on the goddamn floor if it meant he could calm the ache behind his eyes. 

“Fine, whatever,” he said. “Have it your way.”

*

Kaiba’s study was full of dark wood and old dark leather and even older books. It was the complete opposite of the KC offices, which were bright and modern and so clean and white it almost hurt to look at them. This place seemed as incongruous with Kaiba as a person as it was possible to get, and yet he looked right at home at the big cherrywood desk and its slim silver monitor—the only indication that the room had moved out of last century and into this one.

Jounouchi went over to the chaise longue and sprawled on it bonelessly. It was close enough to the desk that he didn’t feel any discomfort, except for the pounding in his head, which throbbed even more viciously once he was horizontal. He almost asked Kaiba for some painkillers, then thought better of it: they’d only kick in after he’d fallen asleep, anyway, and he’d rather eat dirt than ask Kaiba for anything.

He put an arm over his eyes and drifted off to the quiet white-noise sounds of Kaiba’s fingers flying over the keys, and was woken by a horrible lurching shock that fired through his entire body.

He came to his senses on the floor, where he’d spasmed and rolled off the chaise longue, cheek pressed into the pile of an old geometric oriental rug.

“Son of a _bitch_ ,” he croaked, and looked up at Kaiba, who was standing just at the border of their bond.

Kaiba just gave a strained, cruel smile, and said, “Get up. I’m finished for the night.”

Furious, Jounouchi checked his watch. It was 3:46 AM. Kaiba’s schedule, much like the man himself, was insane. “Next time,” he said, getting laboriously to his feet, “Use your damn words, or I’m gonna punch your nose right out the back of your head.”

“Thuggish threats won’t get you anywhere,” Kaiba said, beginning to move away, and Jounouchi was forced to stumble groggily after him or else start feeling queasy.

The bedroom he led them to wasn’t Kaiba’s personal bedroom, Jounouchi could tell that much: it was smaller than Jounouchi had expected, probably a repurposed guest room, in the same sort of Victorian style as the rest of the house. There were two double beds placed next to each other with a small bedside desk between them—like any hotel setup Jounouchi had ever seen—and a bathroom by the door. There was even a small desk in the corner, and a chair and an ottoman by that, right next to a large window which overlooked the sprawling back gardens. For a moment, he was inexplicably relieved: he thought they’d have to sleep in the same bed, and had been subconsciously preparing himself to deal with that the whole way over.

He shouldn’t have worried. Of course Kaiba would never have allowed it.

God, he was tired.

Jounouchi rubbed his eyes. “Shower,” he said, suddenly feeling the gunk of the entire day weighing down on him.

“Ladies first,” said Kaiba, motioning to the bathroom.

Jounouchi gave him the middle finger.

But just as he was about to step in, he stopped. Suddenly the idea of putting a door between them made him balk like a spooked horse. He stared at it for a long moment, feeling a strange anxiety begin to curl up between his ribs. What if Kaiba pulled the same shit he had in his study? Leaving him trapped in the bathroom while he increased the distance between them until it became unbearable agony, just because he could?

_No,_ he told himself firmly: Kaiba would suffer just as much. He wouldn’t do that. He was an asshole, but he wouldn’t throw _himself_ under the bus just to get one up on Jounouchi. That would defeat the entire purpose of winning.

Still, it made him uneasy. “Keep the door open,” he said, after a moment. _Just in case._

He went in and showered quickly. There was a weird itch behind his sternum that meant he was a little too far from Kaiba to be completely comfortable, but it didn’t change, even braced as he was for another burst of pain. He finished and stepped out with a towel around his waist and his clothes under one arm, and Kaiba looked up from where he was sitting primly on the bed closest to the bathroom. The blue light from his phone lit his thin, sharp-angled face from below with a kind of demonic campfire theatricality; he looked as strained and exhausted as Jounouchi felt.

Kaiba’s eyes flicked over him derisively, head to toe, before settling firmly on his face. His mouth thinned, and then he rose from the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. 

He closed the door behind him.

Jounouchi’s heart gave a startled little lurch, but—Kaiba couldn’t run anywhere, and Jounouchi wasn’t about to run either, much as he wanted to. He changed into a pair of boxers he found in the bag Honda had got for him, scrubbed the residual dampness from his hair as best he could, turned off the light, and flopped back on the bed Kaiba had been sitting on. He couldn’t go to the other bed without stretching the limits of their bond, so it looked like he’d be sleeping in this one.

But the itch was still there, annoyingly present, and so was the headache. He stayed awake staring hard at the slice of warm light under the bathroom door, waiting for Kaiba to finish. He couldn’t make himself stop thinking about how there was a door between them, and how he wished it were open, how not seeing Kaiba was making him nervous, somehow.

It was maybe ten minutes before Kaiba emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam and breezy laundry-scented freshness, dressed for bed in navy silk pajamas, because of _course_ he was—but once Jounouchi could see him again, the tightness eased from his chest, and the itch faded away.

But the headache remained. He scowled and pushed his skull back into the pillow.

Kaiba turned off the bathroom light and said nothing to him. Jounouchi watched the dark shape of his body move across the room to the other bed and sink into it with the hiss of fabric against skin. And with sudden and uncomfortable clarity, Jounouchi realized he was probably the only person other than Mokuba ever to have seen an adult Kaiba get ready for bed—unless Kaiba had actually ever dated anyone, which Jounouchi was pretty sure he hadn’t, because the paparazzi would have leapt on it immediately—and the thought was almost absurdly funny.

“Hey Kaiba,” he said, before he could stop himself. “You ever do anything like this before? Like, sleepovers and shit?”

Kaiba was silent for a moment, before saying, “Shut up and go to sleep.”

Jounouchi grinned to himself and rolled onto his back. It wasn’t a _no_ , but it wasn’t a _yes_ , either. 

*

In the morning, Jounouchi was woken for second time by a persistent, tugging ache, like someone had reached their hands into his chest and was pulling on his ribs. Groggily he looked over at Kaiba’s bed, but found it empty. An arrow of alarm lanced through him before he saw the bathroom: the door was open and the sink was running, and Jounouchi could see a slice of Kaiba standing there, already dressed, probably shaving or brushing his teeth or doing whatever he did to keep his skin looking so smooth. Jounouchi snorted and rolled over, pressing his cheek back into the cool, soft pillows, drowsing, though the itch wouldn’t fully let him get back to sleep.

An indeterminate amount of time later, a pillow hit him in the face.

“Get up,” Kaiba said, in the exact same tone he’d used when Jounouchi had been lying on his study floor. Jounouchi groaned a muffled _fuck you_ and threw the pillow back at him. Kaiba stepped neatly out of the way and checked his watch. “You have twenty minutes to do whatever you need to do before we leave.”

“Ugh,” Jounouchi said. He pressed his fingers to his temples. The throb in his head had gotten worse overnight; it was probably a caffeine headache. Fuck. Kaiba had coffee, right?

He threw off the covers and stumbled into the bathroom to piss and shave and brush his teeth, then stumbled back out again to climb into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Kaiba was standing stiffly at the window with his back to him, and when Jounouchi came up behind him, fully dressed, he turned around and sneered, then swept past him.

It was only when they were halfway downstairs, Jounouchi doggedly following Kaiba through his labyrinthine house (and trying desperately to memorize the route they were taking) that he remembered it was a Saturday and thought to ask, “Where are we going?”

“Downstairs,” Kaiba said.

He wasn’t kidding: _downstairs_ was the basement, which—wholly unlike the study—was a sprawling workshop made of stone and shiny metal and glass; some kind of high-tech home laboratory. It required a keycode and Kaiba’s thumbprint to get into, and seemed to span the length of the entire house: there was a bank of computers on a long desk, and a little alcove area with what looked like some kind of miniature server farm, with a wide open space with glowing intersecting lines on the floor on one side, like a small, indoor basketball court. An exit ramp with a row of _really nice cars_ spanned the other side—most of them silver or white or various shades of blue. Parked closest to the ramp was a gleaming platinum motorcycle built to look like a dragon.

“Holy shit,” Jounouchi said. He’d never wanted to get his hands on a machine so badly before.

Then he noticed they weren’t alone.

“Isono,” Kaiba said. “This is Jounouchi. My tumor for the time being.”

Jounouchi remembered Isono primarily from Duelist Kingdom, and secondarily from just about every other public appearance Kaiba had ever made. He was the man’s actual bodyguard, or one of them anyway; and suddenly Jounouchi understood why he was there, and more importantly, that he was about to be in a whole world of pain.

Isono looked him up and down and said flatly, “Do you know what a bodyguard does, Jounouchi-san?”

“Uh, guard bodies?” Jounouchi answered automatically. At Isono’s stony, unimpressed face, he added, half-grinning, “And stand around looking, like, really serious. Like _really_ serious.”

To his credit, Isono’s expression did not change. “What’s your experience?”

“I know how to fight, and I’ve bounced for a hostess club before, but that’s about it.”

“I see. Kaiba-sama has informed me of his situation. I won’t be able to teach you everything, but I _can_ teach you how to act like you know what you’re doing, especially with the limitations that have been imposed upon you. That will have to be good enough.”

Jounouchi was about to object, but then he shut his mouth, because of course Kaiba wasn’t going to pay him to stand around looking like an idiot, and he certainly wouldn’t abide someone who was supposed to be his new bodyguard who had no fucking clue how to do his job. Besides… it would be good job experience. Might increase his options after all this bullshit blew over, especially if he could get a recommendation from Kaiba himself. That’d be worth everything.

So he sighed, sucked his teeth, cracked his knuckles, and nodded. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get to it.”

It was 6:30 AM. While Kaiba sat down at his massive bank of computers, just feet away, Isono showed Jounouchi the ropes: how to analyze a room, how to stick with his ‘principal’ as he moved (which wouldn’t be a problem, as Jounouchi couldn’t go more than ten feet away from him anyway); how to look for irregularities and tells, how to be alert at all times. Around 8:00 AM, Mokuba came down with three cups of coffee accompanied by the butler, who had a whole tray of breakfast ready for all of them. Jounouchi nearly fell on them both in grateful thanks.

“‘Morning! Nii-sama didn’t keep you up too late, did he?” Mokuba said, handing him one of the steaming cups.

“I managed,” Jounouchi said, shooting Kaiba a dirty look. “Did you know your brother is a vampire?”

Mokuba grinned. “You get used to it.”

While he went to go push a cup on Kaiba and Isono, Jounouchi inhaled the coffee and devoured the breakfast: a perfectly round egg yolk atop a perfectly white mound of rice, criminally delicious for how simple it was, and felt much more human.

Then Isono pulled a gun on him.

Jounouchi immediately dodged to the side, heart pounding, but it was too far, and he felt the tell-tale burst of pain in his chest that made his breath halt in his throat. Immediately he rolled back toward Kaiba, vision swimming, panting and staring up at the ceiling. Isono put the gun to his forehead and pulled the trigger.

It clicked; the barrel was empty. The gun wasn’t real. Of course it wasn’t real.

He stepped away and allowed Jounouchi to get back on his feet. “Your reflexes are already very good,” he said. “This time, when I draw the gun, I want you to attempt to disarm me instead of dodging.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, no problem,” Jounouchi panted, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Piece of cake.”

Isono went through several techniques with him: how to disarm someone holding a firearm, how to look for weak points, how to approach, and what to expect from someone looking to disarm him themselves, even though he personally had no experience shooting anything, or even holding a gun—he’d never wanted to pack heat, not even with all the bragging Hirutani did about buying a piece off his Yakuza pals. Jounouchi hadn’t been in the gang to hurt people. Not like that.

“You will not be carrying a firearm when protecting Kaiba-sama, as it is illegal, but that’s no excuse,” Isono told him. “Other people aren’t looking to follow the law. They won’t care that you are.”

By lunch, Jounouchi was dripping with sweat. His headache felt like a nail was being driven into his brain by some asshole with a sledgehammer, hammering and hammering, a blacksmith at an anvil. All he wanted was to take another shower, soothingly cold, and to get rid of the pounding in his skull, and eat his body weight in meat and salt, and not have to do anything else for at least twelve hours. Isono looked completely composed and unruffled, which wasn’t the least bit fair; and to top it all off, Jounouchi kept feeling Kaiba’s eyes on him, prickling, judging.

The butler returned carrying more coffee and a tray full of lunch, without Mokuba, but with a maid, who went directly over to Jounouchi and made him stand with his arms out like a tree. She proceeded to whip out a measuring tape and take his measurements in a clinical, precise way, and was gone again within all of five minutes.

“What was that for?” Jounouchi asked. Kaiba, who was sipping delicately from his new mug of coffee and looking at him with narrowed, calculating eyes.

“You think I’m going to let any personal bodyguard of mine walk around looking like a homeless college dropout?” he said scathingly.

Jounouchi looked at Isono, and then back at Kaiba, dubious. “Do I have to wear the sunglasses too?”

“Yes,” Kaiba said, and turned back to his work.

*

By the time dinner rolled around, Jounouchi’s headache was splitting enough to make him nauseous, and he finally said, “Kaiba—do you have any paracetamol? My head’s killing me.”

Wordlessly, Kaiba reached into his pocket and tossed him a half-empty bottle of pills. Jounouchi caught it and stared at him. He’d had these all along? Asshole. He bit his tongue, took two without saying thank you and tossed the bottle back.

“Any word from Isis or Malik?”

“No,” Kaiba said. “Stop asking. I’ll tell you when I hear anything.”

They went upstairs for dinner. It was served in the kitchen, on the small servants’ table, a much more informal setting than the vast glittering dining room. Mokuba joined them, now dressed in a suit and with his dark hair pulled back; he’d been to the office, then. Jounouchi suddenly recalled how Kaiba would go straight from school to KaibaCorp, not bothering with clubs or teachers or, at times, even to show up at all. Mokuba was clearly a chip off the old ice block, going into work on the weekend—but at least, unlike his brother, he had a smile for Jounouchi as he sat down and dug in.

He and Kaiba discussed work matters, and Jounouchi tuned out, trying to focus on the food and not aggravating his headache too much. The paracetamol was taking its sweet time kicking in, but Jounouchi forced himself to eat. He’d need the energy.

He noticed that Kaiba ate only a few bites himself—which was odd enough, as Jounouchi was pretty sure he’d never seen him eat at all, ever, before this. When Mokuba asked how he was feeling, looking suspicious, he said, “Fine,” but Jounouchi could tell that Mokuba didn’t believe him. And who would, with a face like that? Jounouchi was pretty sure he didn’t look his best either, but Kaiba’s paleness and sharpness and tiredness seemed baked in, and had only gotten worse as the hours passed.

It had only been one day, but it felt like it had already been an entire week. Only when Jounouchi’s head touched the pillow did he feel the headache begin to ebb.

_Fucking finally_ , he thought, and drifted off into sweet, dreamless oblivion.

*

He woke up with his head on fire.

He rolled over to gasp into his pillow. It didn’t feel like a headache; it felt like someone was driving a hot poker through both of his eyeballs simultaneously. It was radiating down into his chest like an oil spill, and the itch was back, somehow, even though Kaiba was— 

“Kaiba,” he croaked. He cracked his eyes to find him lying flat on his back on the other bed, staring up at the ceiling and not moving, his chest rising and falling in short, shallow increments. His eyes looked glazed, pink at the corners, and his pale face was sheened in sweat.

The pain was so bad he almost couldn’t bring himself to move, but he managed it, heaving himself over to Kaiba’s bed and collapsing next to him, hoping at least the increased proximity would help lessen the pain. Their wrists brushed, and immediately, Jounouchi could think again.

The pain faded like it had never been. Jounouchi just lay there, eyes closed, trying to get his breath back. When at last all traces of the migraine had gone, he dared to move his wrist away, ceasing skin-to-skin contact.

Nothing happened.

“Yesterday,” he said slowly, “did you have a headache too?”

Kaiba sat up. Jounouchi saw only his back; his pajamas were clinging to his shoulderblades with sweat.

“Yes. But I get them all the time. I didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary.”

“Right,” Jounouchi said, and didn’t mention that it was probably Kaiba’s crazy sleeping schedule and overworking himself that gave him so many headaches in the first place. “Well, if it starts happening again, then just… grab my wrist or something. And I’ll grab yours.”

Kaiba’s jaw worked. Jounouchi could tell he wasn’t happy; he probably hated to touch anyone at all, the frigid bastard. “Fine,” he said, at last, and stood.

They went back down to the workshop.

Kaiba settled back in to work, while Isono drilled Jounouchi in a second round of protection techniques. By lunch, Jounouchi could effectively disarm him nine times out of ten, evaluate the room, figure out what was different about it than yesterday, what the hazards were, and how he’d handle them if anything were to go awry.

After lunch, his suit arrived. The butler brought it down with the maid, who was holding in her hands a clear tiered box. Just inside, Jounouchi could see, among other dark, angled shapes, a comb and a pair of scissors.

He touched his hair protectively. “Oh, no. No way.”

“She’s not going to cut it all off,” Kaiba said, irritated, and motioned for her to approach.

Jounouchi gave her a pleading look. “Not too short, okay?”

She actually smiled, a much warmer and prettier smile than he’d expected. “Just a trim, Jounouchi-san, I promise.”

It wasn’t _just_ a trim: his hair was a good two inches shorter when she was done. Still long enough on the top to brush the tips of his ears, but the sides were neatly clipped, and it was a good sight shorter than he’d worn it in a long time. While he was bemoaning the loss, the butler had him try the suit on. It was an unremarkable black; black tie, black shoes, white shirt. It wasn’t bespoke or anything—probably someone had plucked it off a rack somewhere and just altered it a little to fit his measurements—but it _did_ fit, and more importantly, it was comfortable. Jounouchi normally hated to wear constricting clothes, but this was… fine. It was fine. He could move in it. He was pretty sure he looked good in it, too.

Kaiba looked him over and gave a short, blank-faced nod. Isono had him practice the drills in the suit, to get him used to moving around in it; then Kaiba joined them for a while, longsufferingly, and Jounouchi practiced walking around with him while Isono tested him on what he’d learned. Kaiba, true to form, didn’t pay them any attention; he answered e-mails on his phone, or dictated notes and instructions to his shiny silver watch, or whatever the fuck else he did that Jounouchi couldn’t actually see.

By the time they were done for the day, Jounouchi was beginning to feel like he could actually do this.

*

That night, Kaiba worked out of his study, and Jounouchi finally turned his phone back on.

He’d completely forgotten about it, what with the headaches and the training, and he was already wincing at what he might find. But it wasn’t too bad: there were a few texts from Honda complaining about work and one from Anzu about some New Yorker who’d reminded her of him (and a blurry photo of a blond guy ordering a drink somewhere to accompany it). There were also a few from Yuugi wishing him good luck and telling him not to worry. And of course, multiple voicemails from his dad.

Jounouchi deleted them all without listening to them.

“Hello?” Kaiba said, and Jounouchi glanced up. He was ready to answer, but it wasn’t for him; Kaiba had just taken a call, and was staring into the middle distance like someone had just told him Mokuba had gotten himself kidnapped again.

“I see,” he said. “Thank you for notifying me.”

He hung up. 

“What?” Jounouchi said. Hell, maybe Mokuba _had_ been kidnapped; Kaiba didn’t look pleased. His mouth twisted, and his eyes flicked to Jounouchi and he parrotted, in a flat mocking tone, “What?”

“You look constipated. More than usual, anyway.”

“It’s nothing.” He closed his laptop and rose from his desk. “You wouldn’t understand even if I explained it to you.”

Jounouchi rolled his eyes. Probably someone just trying to do their job didn’t do it well enough to meet Kaiba’s exacting standards. “Whatever. Don’t really care. Can we get out of here? I’m exhausted.”

*

The headache hadn’t returned. That bastard itch still cropped up whenever he got too far from Kaiba, but it was manageable; he woke up feeling well-rested enough to pretend like he really _was_ a privately employed bodyguard for one of the richest men on planet Earth.

The suit had been brought up and hung on the back of the door, along with five other exact duplicates. He put one of them and looked himself over in the mirror. Even with his hair loose and stubble dotting his jaw, he looked more professional than he ever had before—not that he’d ever had much incentive to wear a real suit, except for a few job interviews that never went anywhere because nobody respectable wanted to hire someone who hadn’t gone to university. 

He looked dubiously down at the comb and the bottle of hair wax that had been set out for him. Usually, he just ran his fingers through his hair, and that was enough. It’s not like he’d ever rocked a pompadour like that idiot Sozoji, or even a fauxhawk like Honda. His crowd had always been proud to be men’s men, and that meant not fucking around with girly shit like hair products unless it made you smell like cigarettes and gasoline.

“Having trouble?” came Kaiba’s drawling voice by the open door. Jounouchi turned to see him leaning against the frame, arms crossed, a flat, expectant look on his face.

“No,” Jounouchi said automatically. He grabbed the hair wax and fumbled the lid open. How hard could it possibly be? He rubbed the wax over his hands and raised them to his head, eyeing his fringe. If he just… pushed it back… yeah.

It looked like he’d dived headlong into a pitcher of grease.

“Pathetic,” was all Kaiba said, before moving over to him. “Turn around. I’ll do it.”

In a second, Jounouchi realized Kaiba was about to touch him, but he wasn’t prepared for how oddly nice and soothing it felt, as though a knot that had been building somewhere deep inside him suddenly unraveled at the press of Kaiba’s fingers through his hair, the faint scrape of his nails against his scalp.

He suppressed a shiver and focused on the little patch of space beyond Kaiba’s right shoulder, and didn’t look at his face, or his long pale throat with the collar unbuttoned—or anything, really. It felt so strangely good that he didn’t want to ruin the moment by coming to terms with the fact that it was Kaiba’s long-fingered hands in his hair, of all people.

Two minutes later, Kaiba turned him back around again, and Jounouchi looked at himself in the mirror while Kaiba washed his hands free of the wax.

Jounouchi had to admit, he looked pretty good like this. And with his hair styled back, he didn’t really look like… well, himself. If he put on the sunglasses, he probably wouldn’t recognize his own face. And even without them, he still appeared to be just one of Kaiba’s many besuited goons—which was the point.

In a way, it was comforting: this wasn’t him, and he didn’t want anyone to think it was.

“Dress like that more often, and people might start taking you seriously,” Kaiba said. “Until you open your mouth, that is.”

“Says the guy who used to hang out of helicopters wearing stupid coats all the time.”

“And yet people still took me seriously.”

“Probably because you paid them to.”

“I don’t buy people’s loyalty, whatever you may have heard,” Kaiba said.

“Bet the money helps, though,” Jounouchi muttered.

Even with the two-day boot camp Isono had put him through, Jounouchi felt his nerves shriveling up and eating at him. He told himself he should be used to people staring at him, being a duelist for so long, and that they weren’t _really_ going to be paying attention to him—they’d be paying attention to Kaiba, they wouldn’t care about some anonymous bodyguard—but even so. 

He was grateful for the sunglasses, because they helped hide his face, at least in part. Kaiba had given them to him before they’d gone out the door, and they were startlingly high-tech, able to switch from sunglasses to regular glasses with a command or a tap of his finger, record video and audio, assist with room scans, and receive messages. It was like having a HUD up at all time, though he could collapse it if need be. No wonder all Kaiba’s goons wore them. They were fucking awesome.

“If you break these, it’s coming out of your paycheck,” Kaiba told him.

“You got it, boss,” he muttered sarcastically, and followed him out to the waiting car.

They went in via the building’s basement parking and took the private executive elevator up to Kaiba’s penthouse office.

“Kaiba-sama, Jounouchi-san,” said the pretty woman at the desk, whose name plaque read _Tachibana Hana_. Jounouchi blinked at her before he realized that of course Kaiba had briefed his secretary about his new security guard; everything had already been taken care of. He gave her a short nod instead of the jaunty wave and bright boyish grin he’d usually give and followed Kaiba swiftly into his office.

Jounouchi soon realized that Kaiba had rearranged his schedule in order to do the bare minimum of personal interaction with people, and if there was personal interaction to be done, he did it over a conference call, or via hologram, which seemed to be his preferred alternative to video. Each time, Jounouchi was out of sight and of earshot, which suited him just fine; Kaiba didn’t want him there, and he didn’t want to be there, so it was easy to stay out of the way.

The glasses, he found, could connect to the Internet, project videos, and load a handful of simple KC virtual reality games. In between the games and the movies and the occasional text, he kept himself entertained with little trouble. Kaiba barely moved from his desk except to occasionally stand and walk to the bathroom whenever either of them had to relieve themselves.

The headache began just as the sun went down behind the tops of the tallest buildings, casting everything in the city, and in Kaiba’s office, a brilliant orange-gold. Kaiba was so absorbed in his work that he barely glanced at Jounouchi as he got up and walked over.

But when Jounouchi took his wrist, he froze. 

The headache faded to blissful, cottony nothingness. As did Kaiba’s, if the way his spine suddenly relaxed a fraction more was any indication.

Then he jerked his wrist away and resumed typing.

Jounouchi glanced at what he was working on, and it was just a load of different panels of blue text he assumed was code, so he retreated back to the little sofa area to watch a couple recent duels and take notes for when he could play again. It was only when the sun had disappeared completely below the horizon that he said, “Okay, wrap it up, Kaiba. A man’s gotta eat.”

“So get something from the café,” Kaiba said dismissively, before his hands stilled, and he realized the impossibility of what he’d just said.

Jounouchi smirked. “The café, huh? Sure, I’ll just go do that.”

Kaiba’s mouth thinned. “I’ll be finished in an hour.”

“I'm starving _now._ It's—” he checked his watch, “almost eight. Either you wrap it up, or I'm gonna call in some shitty takeout and make your poor secretary go get it. Besides, these hours ain't normal.”

“You work for me. I decide which hours are normal.”

“You and ‘normal’ are about as far apart as we are from the sun, Kaiba. Anyway, isn’t Mokuba waiting for you at home?”

Kaiba’s eyes flicked up at him. “If you’re trying to guilt trip me, you’re wasting your time.”

“Guess it was too much to hope that you’d grown a conscience.” When Kaiba didn’t rise to the bait, Jounouchi paused, and said, “But seriously, come on. Food. We need it? To survive?”

Kaiba waved a hand and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Order in. Tachibana will go get it.”

“Poor woman,” Jounouchi muttered, and dug out his phone to do just that.

*

By mid-week, he was beginning to go a little stir-crazy. The headaches were getting more and more frequent, and he had to touch Kaiba both in the mornings and in the afternoons to keep them at bay, which was already twice as much as he cared to do at all. 

It was always him, too: Kaiba never initiated anything, always let Jounouchi come to him, made him do all the work, and it was beginning to piss him off. He'd said he was used to headaches, but the fact that he now knew how to prevent them somehow did not stop him from pretending otherwise.

“I want to see Yuugi,” Jounouchi said. He was going to lose his mind if he had to spend another day in Kaiba's presence without Yuugi there to help keep him sane. He needed to talk to a living breathing human who loved and understood him, who could anchor him with words of praise and encouragement, not a reptile in a human suit hell-bent on making his life miserable.

“So call him,” Kaiba said. “I’m sure he’ll scurry right over.”

“Nope,” said Jounouchi. “You're gonna leave work early and have your driver stop by Kame Game. I'm sick and tired of this place. And of you. I want to spend time with my friends.”

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before signing the paperwork.”

“Or _perhaps_ you could think about someone other than yourself for once in your damn life,” Jounouchi said. “I've been following you around for days without asking you for anything. I went along with your stupid idea because you didn't give me a choice in the first place. So now the least you can do is let me see my best friend for a couple hours before I have to spend even more soul-sucking time with you.”

“I can't imagine why you think I'd let you do anything when you speak to me like that.”

“ _Let_ me do anything? You’re not the boss of me.”

Kaiba's face warped into an odd half-snarl. “I think you’ll find that I _am_ , actually, in case your tiny little brain has forgotten. I don't want to be around you any more than you want to be around me, but that's how things have to be for the time being. Sacrifices have to be made.”

“Oh yeah? And what kind of sacrifices have you made, huh? Because from where I'm standing, it doesn't look like you've given up anything but your personal space, while I've given up my home, my friends, my job, my family—”

“You mean your minimum wage job and your violent drunkard father? Ah, yes. What a terrible sacrifice.”

Jounouchi felt a flash of white-hot rage. “Don't talk about my life like you know anything about it,” he warned.

Kaiba gave him a tight, cruel little smile.

“If anything, I've vastly improved your quality of ‘life’. You get to sleep in a warm bed and eat my food, rent-free. I've given you an opportunity and a salary most people could only dream of. Some of them would even kill for it.”

“I never fucking wanted it!” Jounouchi shouted. “I would've rather taken a thousand shitty minimum-wage jobs than work for you! I don't want your money or your _hospitality_ , I don't care about your stupid company or your secret projects. I never asked for any of this!”

“ _Neither did I_ ,” Kaiba hissed. “But here we are. So be grateful for what I _have_ done for you and stop whining.”

Jounouchi couldn't speak for the anger in his throat. He walked up to Kaiba behind his desk and leaned over him, bracing himself on the armrests of his chair. Kaiba met his gaze and did not budge an inch. Up close, Jounouchi could see the bags forming under his eyes, his skin wan and sallow.

His eyes really were so horribly blue.

“I want,” he said, very slowly and clearly, “to see my friends, or I will make your life really fucking difficult, Kaiba. I promise you.”

Kaiba's eyes narrowed. “As I said,” he said, in the same slow, mocking tones, “call them. They’re welcome to visit.”

Jounouchi straightened up. Then he started walking backward.

Kaiba watched him go, jaw stubbornly clenched; but his eyes widened slightly in alarm as Jounouchi reached the edge of their bond and then kept going. His back hit the double doors, some twenty feet from Kaiba’s desk, and he slid jerkily down the seam, his legs no longer able to support his weight.

It felt like dying, like his organs were being pulled forward and out. But it was with vicious satisfaction that he knew Kaiba was feeling the same pain, the same _pull_ , unable to focus, consumed with the desire to close the distance between them and find relief. His hands were gripping the desk, white-knuckled, and his face had drained of what little color it had left.

Once, Jounouchi’s father had gotten so drunk and angry that he'd beaten Jounouchi badly enough to give him a couple cracked ribs and a broken wrist. The days spent healing and pretending like it wasn't as bad as it actually was had felt a little like this—only this wasn’t just physical pain: he felt it deep inside him, like something was gnawing at his soul, like he was stretching it so thin that it was ready to tear in half.

Jounouchi had practice dealing with pain. This hurt, but it was a throbbing, aching hurt, not a sharp burning agony. Yet.

“Kaiba-shachou? Is everything all right?” came Tachibana’s voice over the intercom. She must have heard Jounouchi’s back hit the doors.

Kaiba jabbed the talk button. “Everything’s fine.” 

“Liar,” Jounouchi gritted out.

Jounouchi watched him close his eyes, swallow, and, amazingly, put his fingers back to the keys. He managed close to five minutes of erratic typing before Jounouchi saw a rivulet of red blood crawl down his upper lip and drip onto his pristine white shirt. 

He felt a twin tickle in his own nose and touched his trembling fingers to his nostrils. They came away wet and red.

_Well, that’s not good_ , he thought hazily to himself, and gave a light, breathy laugh.

Kaiba hadn’t moved, but he’d squeezed his eyes shut, and sweat glistened on his face and on his throat, just as it had stuck Jounouchi’s shirt to his chest and his hair to his forehead. Jounouchi watched him for a moment longer, feeling the hot blood drip steadily from his nose to his collar—watching, with vicious, petty satisfaction, as the same thing kept happening to Kaiba: thin red worms wriggling down his throat to stain the clean perfection of his suit.

At last, Kaiba stood—stumbled, but caught himself—and walked out from behind the desk toward him. He was even taller like this, looking down at him, the blood from his nose spattering like raindrops onto the floor; Jounouchi looked blearily up at him from a worm’s eye view, vision clouded, slowly clearing.

The rush of relief at his proximity felt so good he knocked his skull back against the double doors and let out a sticky, shaky breath. He saw the relief in Kaiba’s face, too, the slight softening of his features—the way his entire body relaxed, as if he’d been tied tight to a pole and the ropes had only just begun to loosen.

“Stop,” Kaiba said. Exhaustion had leeched the authority from his voice; now he just sounded tired. “I’m not going to put myself in the hospital just because you threw a tantrum.”

Jounouchi grinned lazily up at him, tasting iron. “You’re just mad you lost.”

“Get up, grow up, and stop acting like a child.”

“That’s rich coming from you.”

“Everything is rich coming from me,” Kaiba said, and extended his hand, looking sour.

Jounouchi’s eyes dropped to it, completely taken aback, and then back up at Kaiba’s gruesome-looking face. “Did you just make a joke?” he asked; Kaiba looked like he’d just torn someone’s neck out, with his bloodied mouth and shirt, skin waxy and white. “Don’t make jokes, it’s fucking weird.” 

And he grasped the hand and used it to lever himself upward.

The contact flooded him with feeling, but Kaiba didn’t let him bask in it: he yanked his hand away and wiped it on the thigh of his trousers, then turned. He got five feet away before the pain hit. The both of them stopped and stared at each other.

Five feet. Not ten. 

The diameter of their bond had shrunk.

*

They didn't stop by Kame Game. It had been an unspoken agreement between them that this new development took precedent, whatever the fuck it was, and until they'd adjusted, he didn't want Yuugi to see him like this. He didn’t want _anyone_ to know how bad it had become.

The headache came again right before they arrived at the mansion, but Jounouchi did nothing to soothe it, easy as it would have been to reach over and brush Kaiba’s hand in the backseat. He was still pissed off.

Then there was the bed.

Neither of them said anything. Jounouchi tried not to think about the absurdity of the situation, because he was sure that if he did, he'd start laughing and wouldn't be able to stop. So he pulled back the covers and slipped between the sheets, turning his back to the middle of the bed. He felt the mattress dip as Kaiba joined him, but then there was no other movement: a perfect stillness between them, and far too much space. He tried very hard to drift off as soon as he could, and not think about how warm he felt, how comforted, and the complete lack of the itch in his chest, even as his headache pounded merrily away.

*

He woke to the sensation of movement, of being moved, of heat and comfort. His arm was curled around something—a warm thing, something he wanted to keep close—but it was shifting away, and he frowned and grasped his warm thing even tighter, trying to pull it back toward him.

“Get your hands off me, deadbeat,” the thing said, and shoved him away.

“Uh?” he mumbled groggily, and then the delayed understanding that he must have been _cuddling_ Kaiba slammed into him. He felt his sleep-addled mind shudder with vague disgust, but—and as he rolled back over to see Kaiba sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to Jounouchi—he realized he didn’t really care, because he felt fucking _great._ Like he'd just been to the sauna, with a massage right after...

Had to be the touching, he realized, with a weird sort of jolt. Had to be. It had been prolonged contact, more than a simple brush of skin, a quick grab of the wrist. Then he realized that part of the pleasant warm feeling was the morning wood currently tenting the sheets between his legs, sending nice little low-level sparks of pleasure pinging around his lower half.

Okay. Well. 

That was humiliating, but it happened. Surely Kaiba understood. Probably. And if he'd felt it—well, of course he’d felt it, Jounouchi had been fucking _spooning_ him.

Jounouchi groaned and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Need the bathroom,” he mumbled. Kaiba gave a stiff nod and walked away from him to sit in the chair, immediately absorbing himself in his phone.

He stumbled awkwardly to the bathroom, trying to hide his erection as best he could in a threadbare pair of boxers, then shoved them down and jerked off furtively into the toilet as quickly and as quietly as possible. It didn't take long, but even though it was over in a few strokes, the orgasm sent such a nice liquid-soft feeling up his spine that he just basked in it for a moment, dazed. He felt better than he had in recent memory, loose-limbed and golden.

He came out of the bathroom to see Kaiba sitting there, white-knuckled on the armrests, stiff as a board. There was some color to his cheeks that hadn’t been there before, but his eyes were stormy with anger, and he was staring straight ahead; wouldn’t look at him. 

“S’your problem?” Jounouchi yawned, stretching his arms over his head.

Kaiba got to his feet and disappeared into the bathroom. Jounouchi rolled his eyes.

Ten minutes later, the itch was back.

And by the time they'd reached KaibaCorp, so was the headache.

*

Jounouchi was given a paper copy of Kaiba’s schedule each morning by his PA, so he noticed at once that, unlike most other meetings he'd had so far that week, this one was going to be held in an actual conference room with actual human beings.

“I can't avoid it,” Kaiba explained, when Jounouchi had pointed it out: he didn’t look especially pleased by the idea either. “It was organized a month in advance. Some of the men and women there are flying in from other countries to represent competing companies. I need to be there personally.”

Jounouchi frowned. “Have you ever had a bodyguard attend meetings with you before?”

“Overseas. Not here in my own building.”

“They're gonna think you're paranoid, or something's actually wrong.”

“I _am_ paranoid, and something _is_ wrong,” Kaiba said coolly. “But not for any reason they'd be able to discern. Besides, allowing them to think I've increased my personal security isn't a bad thing. It means they're less likely to try anything.”

Jounouchi looked at him, vaguely alarmed. “Who’s _they?_ ”

“My enemies.”

Jounouchi stared flatly at him. “You know you sound completely insane, right?”

“Need I remind you of all the times someone attempted to hurt me or my brother in a bid to control my company?”

Well, that was true enough. Still:

“Even if your enemies were spying on you, what makes you think they’d try something here, of all places?”

Kaiba gave him a thin smile. “Complacency is the enemy of progress and awareness, Jounouchi. It's much easier to strike where someone feels the most safe.”

“Wow,” Jounouchi said, impressed. “You really _are_ a paranoid bastard.”

And that was, hours later, how he found himself doing the job he'd supposedly been hired for.

It was easy to slip into the mindset Isono had beaten into him, and easier still to look like the kind of guy who didn't give a shit what anyone else thought. For the most part, the men and women filtering into the conference room glanced right over him, like he was just some wall fixture, but some eyes lingered, intrigued.

The conference room was huge, with a sleek dark table several meters long. It was pretty high up in the building, so the clear bank of windows on the right offered a beautiful view of Domino: a sea of toy buildings gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Everyone took their seats, Kaiba at the head of the table, an empty chair beside him. Jounouchi stood silently some feet behind and to his right, feet planted shoulder-width apart, hands clasped loosely in front of him—far enough back to become just another piece of furniture, or dull corporate art, a part of the room itself.

Then Mokuba walked in, wearing an unsubtle lavender three-piece suit and carrying a tablet under his arm. He took the seat next to his brother, not even acknowledging Jounouchi, and the meeting began.

Jounouchi didn't pay much attention to what was being said; instead he focused on the faces of those present, their expressions as they talked, or as they listened to Kaiba or Mokuba talk. Some seemed entirely engaged, and some, he was amused to note, made disdainful little expressions when they thought the Kaiba brothers weren’t looking. And some kept glancing at Jounouchi curiously whenever he shifted, as if suddenly remembering he was there.

But as it went on, the itching grew stronger, and the headache pounded ever harder, and all he could think about was making it go away. It would be easy to close the distance between them, but in front of all these people—he couldn't. It would look too unnatural, would draw too much attention.

So he stood there and took it.

Then the meeting was over, and everyone bowed and shook hands with each other and filtered right back out again. An older man lingered back to talk to Kaiba and Mokuba, but the conversation was all in Korean, and Jounouchi didn't understand a single word of it.

_Hurry up and go away_ , he thought, near desperate. _Hurry up hurry up hurry up._ The burning itch had twisted into a craving, like he’d gone too long without a cigarette and now he _needed_ one, needed to get that hit, the soothing comfort of dry warmth in his lungs. How could Kaiba look so calm when he was feeling the same thing? And how the hell could he focus enough to hold a conversation in a different language?

At last, the old man left, and the breath Jounouchi felt like he'd been holding for days suddenly flew out of him. He strode right over to Kaiba and grabbed his wrist.

The relief was immediate: a cool drink of water on a hot day, ice that melted down his spine and soothed the aching heat. His parched body felt sated, its strange thirst quenched once more.

Kaiba didn't throw him off, didn't move, didn’t speak. He too seemed to be collecting his breath, the rigid line of his shoulders softening, relaxing.

Mokuba blinked down at their hands, then up at him, and then at Kaiba. His eyes narrowed. “Nii-sama?”

At that, Kaiba did tug his wrist away.

The headache returned immediately. Not as bad as it was—more of a dull bruised tiredness, like he’d hit his head on something hours before—but still horribly present. Jounouchi's heart sank, and Kaiba grimaced. “I'll explain later,” he said shortly. “Suffice it to say this curse isn't satisfied with just the one inconvenience.”

*

“It's getting worse,” Jounouchi said, after they’d arrived back at the mansion. He shrugged off his suit jacket, tossed it on the ottoman, and loosened his tie. “The headaches are getting more frequent. Even after—you know.”

“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed,” Kaiba snapped.

“Has Isis said anything? Did Malik get back to Yuugi?”

Kaiba's mouth pursed. He shook his head and glared out of the window. “The last I heard, they were both still looking into how to reverse it.”

Jounouchi got the sinking feeling that now they'd need to touch more often, and for longer periods—a conclusion he could see Kaiba had also reached, if the glacial, harried look on his face was any indication. As if out of pure spite, he was now standing at the very edge of their bond, turned away, his arms folded across his chest.

“Making it worse won't help,” Jounouchi said, stepping forward to lessen the twinge. They’d both seen what had happened when they’d pushed their connection—like a rubber band, it snapped back before it could be stretched again.

“Neither will giving into the curse’s demands.”

“Demands?” Jounouchi snorted. “I don't know about you, but I'd rather touch you a couple times a day than not be able to function because I feel like someone’s pulling my guts out of my ears.” He jabbed a finger at Kaiba’s back. “And don't pretend like it doesn't hurt you either.”

Kaiba was silent, rigid. “I can ignore it.”

Jounouchi almost laughed. “What? No, you can't. You got, what, five minutes in before you couldn’t stand it anymore? Your nose started bleeding.” _Our noses._ He yanked his shirt over his head and started unbuckling his belt.

Kaiba half-turned to stare at him. “If you expect me to—”

“You can keep your stupid shirt on, princess. Just hike it up a little when we’re back-to-back, so we can…” He waved a hand to poorly illustrate what he didn’t want to say, or even particularly think about. 

“Or,” Kaiba said coldly, “you can sleep in the other bed tonight.”

“Or you can get over yourself.” Jounouchi shucked off his pants. “I don’t want to have to do this either, but I’m not gonna punish myself just because that’s how you live your life. Just deal with it.”

He reached out, but Kaiba jerked away. 

“Keep your grubby hands to yourself,” he snapped, and Jounouchi drew back, startled.

“Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?”

“You heard me. I’d rather not enjoy a repeat performance of this morning.”

“What, the spooning? I didn’t mean to. It just kind of happened.”

“Which is why you’ll be sleeping in the other bed.”

“Fuck’s sake, Kaiba. Why are you being such a baby about this?”

“I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

“You know that? You really don’t,” Jounouchi said, and grabbed his shoulder anyway.

He saw the slap coming and caught Kaiba’s wrist in his hand. The headache ebbed at once—but then Kaiba’s other fist collided with his jaw, and a burst of pain shocked through him like he’d touched a live wire. Kaiba stumbled back, holding his head, like _he’d_ been the one who gotten punched instead. Jounouchi fought the lurch of disorientation, took the opening, and leapt. He shoved Kaiba back onto the bed, sat on his stomach, and grabbed the front of his perfectly pressed shirt. He pulled his fist back, ready to rearrange his face.

Then he stopped.

His skin tingled, and for a moment, he saw himself outside of his body: he was in nothing but his boxers, braced above Kaiba on a bed, Kaiba’s chest heaving beneath him, Kaiba’s hand flat and hot on his sternum, his thumb just brushing the edge of his right nipple. Kaiba’s face had drained of all color, but it was contorted in ghoulish anger, the clearwater blue of his eyes glinting like knives.

They froze there, suspended in time. Then Jounouchi rolled off him onto his side, swallowing hard, his heart pounding. _Stupid._ So stupid.

He felt Kaiba turn on his side as well, stiff. But despite his previous outrage, the bottom of his shirt had been rucked up so that a slice of his cool skin touched Jounouchi’s lower back, reconnecting them, and it felt so horribly right and good that Jounouchi had to stop himself from rolling over and burying his nose in Kaiba’s long neck just to feel more of it.

He needed to see Yuugi, or he was gonna lose his mind.

Tomorrow.

*

“How are things?” Yuugi asked, voice low. “I hope Kaiba-kun isn’t being too…”

“Himself?” Jounouchi snorted. “Don’t worry. He’s been a perfect asshole.”

They were holed up in Yuugi’s room, Jounouchi sitting against the door, Yuugi cross-legged in front of him. He’d made Kaiba stay on the other side, wanting to having a private conversation—needing the separation, even if the door between them stung like a thorn in his sternum.

“I hate this,” Jounouchi said, picking at thread in the frayed knee of his jeans. “I hate him. I swear I’m going crazy, Yuugi. I can’t keep living like this, with… him. I just wish I knew what this was.”

Yuugi blinked at him. “But—you do know. Don’t you?”

“Eh?”

“What it is. And what happened, and how to make it stop, at least temporarily. And why…” Yuugi hesitated. “You really don’t know?”

Jounouchi grabbed his shoulders. “What don’t I know?” 

“The thing you and Kaiba touched before all this. It’s a tyet, a Knot of Isis—the goddess, not our Isis. So, it ties things together, and… because you touched it at the same time, it tied you and Kaiba-kun together. But it, um—Isis, among other things, she’s the goddess of love and marriage and magic and, well, sex. It's hurting you because you haven't… consummated it yet. The marriage. Apparently you’re supposed to do that soon after the knot is tied.”

The _marriage?_

Jounouchi's whole body flooded with ice, and then fire. He stared at Yuugi with horrified, furious incredulity and said, slowly, “What do you mean, _marriage?_ ” And then, “You mean—you've known this whole time?”

“Yes? Malik told me a week ago. He said Isis would talk to Kaiba-kun. He really didn't tell you?”

Jounouchi saw red. _A week ago._ That phone call.

“I'm gonna kill that son of a bitch,” he breathed. He got up and wrenched open the door.

Kaiba was leaning against the wall on the other side, right where they’d left him. He didn’t even attempt to defend himself as Jounouchi grabbed the lapels of his dark coat and shoved him violently against the wall.

“Is this why you didn’t want me to see Yuugi? Because you knew he’d tell me?” Jounouchi yelled. Rage made him sloppy, too forceful; their noses almost brushed. Jounouchi fought to keep from rearing back punching his skull into the drywall.

Yuugi, who had rushed out after him, said quickly, “Jounouchi-kun, please don’t, I’m sure Kaiba-kun has a good reason—”

Kaiba’s eyes didn’t leave Jounouchi’s face. “Tell you what?”

“You know what!”

“I know a lot of things, Jounouchi.” The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Unlike you.”

Jounouchi shook him. “That ain’t cute, you selfish piece of shit. That we—what we have to do,” he gritted out, belated embarrassment flushing his cheeks with heat, remembering—skin, warmth, Kaiba’s solid weight above him, below him. 

The sudden understanding of why Kaiba had been acting like such an asshole recently, trying to hold back, to limit their exposure to one another, hit him like a knife in the neck. He should have punched him in his smug bastard face when he’d had the chance.

“It doesn’t matter that I didn’t tell you, because I’m not having sex with you.” Kaiba took his wrists—the contact felt good enough that Jounouchi’s brain went momentarily liquid and fuzzy before the discomfort of his bones squeezing together set in—and removed them from his person. “What we’ve been doing so far has been working just fine.”

Jounouchi wrenched away. “Coward,” he spat, even though he couldn’t begin to fathom the idea of having sex with Kaiba, recoiled from it, just as Kaiba had recoiled from him. The thought of it made his insides skitter around and curl up like dead bugs roasting in the summer heat. But some part of him knew what they were doing wasn’t enough, that it wasn’t sustainable, that it would just get worse, and it terrified him. “I’m so sick of your bullshit.”

Yuugi was frowning too. “You should have told him, Kaiba-kun,” he said quietly, firmly. “He deserves to know, even if you don’t like it. Lying doesn’t help anyone.”

“Neither does his knowing about it,” Kaiba said.

“I’m right here, you prick.”

“More’s the pity.”

“Trust me,” Jounouchi snarled, “I wouldn’t fucking touch you if I didn’t have to. Not in a million years.” He saw a flash of something dark and fleeting spark in Kaiba’s eyes before it burned off into cool, controlled nothingness.

“The feeling’s mutual,” Kaiba said, so calm and so cold that Jounouchi felt the hairs on the back of his arms stand on end.

*

Yuugi sent them off with promises to visit, wary-eyed, and Jounouchi didn’t speak to Kaiba for the entire rest of the evening. Not even when they slipped into bed together; not when their spines aligned and the sweet bliss of skin-on-skin contact erased every physical hurt he’d accumulated since their fight, not even when the heat grew low in his belly and the faint ache of _more, more, more_ pulsed along with his headache.

Would it really be so bad? Even if it was with a guy? Even if it was _Kaiba?_ Just once—and they’d never have to speak about it again. They could forget and pretend it had never happened and get on with their lives. It didn’t have to be difficult.

Jounouchi had done plenty of things he didn’t want to do. He’d made a living of it. What was one more? 

One and done.

He realized he hadn’t even really thought of sex since this whole thing started, not even when he’d jerked off before. His head had been full of cotton; he’d relieved himself automatically, on autopilot. He hadn’t reached for a well-worn fantasy, hadn’t deliberately imagined anything—he’d been too tired and stressed and angry, in too much pain to even really think about what he was doing.

But now arousal was prickling in his veins, and then suddenly a whole host of breathless images flooded his thoughts—lips, breasts, slippery pink softness, spread wide, so easy to slide his fingers into, his cock, his tongue, so easy. 

He tried not to. He gripped the pillow and clenched his teeth and tried to think about anything else, anything but sex, about the growing heat in his dick, slowly pushing all rational thought from his mind.

_Don’t jerk off with Kaiba right next to you_ , he told himself. _Don’t do it. Don’t be that asshole._

But his hand was already sliding down his stomach and into his boxers.

He’d be quiet. It wouldn’t take long.

It was difficult to keep still. He couldn’t put his wrist into motion without moving his entire arm and knocking his elbow into Kaiba’s back, and moving his hips was out of the question. He squeezed himself rhythmically, but he wasn’t a teenager anymore, and it was only prolonging the torture instead of bringing him closer to the edge. After ten minutes of what amounted to merciless teasing, his cock was throbbing desperately in his fist, and he was biting his tongue against gasping, ready to say fuck it and just jerk off hard and fast, Kaiba’s comfort be damned— 

“ _Stop_ ,” Kaiba hissed.

Jounouchi’s fist stilled on the upstroke, cinched tight around his cockhead. Adrenaline fired through him, and his heart pulsed with great juddery waves. A flood of raw desire so great it blinded him rolled through his body like a tsunami, obliterating the last vestiges of his self-control.

“I can’t,” he whispered, and thrust shallowly into his hand.

Kaiba was cold and still and silent for what felt like a millennia, then gritted out, “Then hurry up. Just—finish.”

Jounouchi’s heart throbbed in his throat, in his cock. He immediately picked up the unrestrained rhythm he’d so wanted, needed; his hand flew over himself, squeezing, pulling, slipping wet and easy. Everything built fast, and he arched and started to come over his fist and into his boxers and couldn’t stop himself from letting out a staggered, hoarse groan. Beside him, he felt Kaiba tense up and curl away, slightly in on himself, and then it occurred to him that maybe Kaiba hadn’t just _heard_ him, but that he’d felt it too, and maybe he’d even felt it when Jounouchi had jerked off the first time, and everything whited out into bone-deep mindless pleasure for a long, long minute.

It felt so good Jounouchi forgot embarrassment, forgot mortification. He didn’t even feel anything but a warm fuzzy glow as Kaiba got up and left him. Distantly, he heard the sink run; saw a warm light flick on, a blurry boxy streak across the floor. But by the time the high had faded, he was fading too. 

He slept.

*

In the morning, he woke up feeling deeply hungover, and the itch was back, but that was because Kaiba wasn’t in the bed: Jounouchi stared at the long dent in the mattress beside him that still held a bit of Kaiba’s warmth and felt his entire world tilt sideways. 

Embarrassment flooded his face with heat. He looked at his own hand, which was still streaked in dried come, and silently thanked every god he knew of—except Isis—that Kaiba had decided to save them both the humiliation of each other’s presence.

In fact, Kaiba didn’t acknowledge his existence for the entire morning—which was more than fine with him: they existed silently together as if the other simply wasn’t there, as if they chose to do all they did of their own free will, and the inconvenient handicap of each other’s presence was worth nothing to them. Then the headache started back up again, and Jounouchi was forced to brush his fingers against Kaiba’s wrist to soothe it away, and not think about what he’d been doing with that same hand just hours earlier.

But after a moment or two, the headache returned, just as persistent. 

“Fuck,” he muttered, and decided to suffer through it—at least for the next hour. He couldn’t shake the horrible feeling that he’d disturbed the equilibrium, dislodged a pebble somewhere on some carefully-maintained mountain, and it was about to lead to an avalanche.

When he received the day’s schedule from Tachibana, he stared at it, swore again, and then looked up at Kaiba.

“You’re kidding me,” he said, unease prickling at his nape. “A soubetsukai?”

“I only have to put in an appearance and say a few words,” Kaiba said, almost automatically, like he’d forgotten he was ignoring Jounouchi completely. “It won’t take long. An hour at most.”

Jounouchi could believe he’d done this before—most high-ranking businessmen did, when an employee retired or left the company—but the idea of Kaiba deigning to grace his subordinates with his presence at all, no matter the deep insult it would give if he didn’t, seemed so strangely ordinary and ludicrous that Jounouchi almost laughed.

“An hour,” he repeated, worrying his lip with a canine. “Okay. Fine.”

The employee turned out to be one of Kaiba’s R&D people with over forty years’ experience in the industry, most of which had been spent working for KaibaCorp, and the last few for Kaiba directly—and suddenly it made a lot more sense why Kaiba had chosen to attend this particular enkai. The venue was a ridiculously expensive traditional restaurant in a part of town Jounouchi had never even set foot in, not that he’d ever had any reason to; the door was flanked by beautiful women in kimono, effortlessly graceful and perfect, and everyone who attended wore clothing Jounouchi was sure cost more than he’d ever earned in a year—especially Kaiba, who’d shrugged on a midnight blue suit over his black turtleneck and stuck a little white dragon pin on his lapel.

Isono came with them to do the job Jounouchi was only pretending to do, which was good, because the headache had become so bad that he didn’t think he could focus enough even to try. He knocked back two pills and hoped it would be enough to dull the pain.

They met Mokuba inside, with his own bodyguard—a man twice as broad with a suit that strained over his biceps, and no hair to speak of. Mokuba had a low, murmuring conversation with his brother that Jounouchi didn’t quite catch and didn’t quite care about. He stood in the corner of the room closest to Kaiba, who settled at the low long table in perfectly straight seiza posture, and waited for it to be over.

By the end of the first hour, Jounouchi was beginning to feel panic rising in the back of his throat. His veins were igniting, the itch in his chest beginning to throb, and his head was killing him. The paracetamol had done nothing. He kept his eyes trained on the back of Kaiba’s head, looking for any sign of similar discomfort, but without being able to see his face, he couldn’t tell.

An hour and thirty minutes in, he could barely see for the nauseous crawling need tickling ant-like at the back of his throat. His thoughts raced, half-formed and nebulous, tumbling over each other like clothes in a dryer. Kaiba was making a speech, his voice ringing low and authoritative, without so much as a tremor to signify anything was amiss, but Jounouchi could tell by the familiar way his shoulders were set that he was suffering too.

_Stubborn prick_ , Jounouchi thought, and felt a droplet of cold sweat run down his spine. He knew he was rapidly approaching his breaking point, but he couldn’t excuse himself, couldn’t escape or run away. He couldn’t do anything but stare at Kaiba and all the small, tempting slices of his skin—his jaw, his ears, his long-fingered pianist’s hands—fuck, if he could only touch his hands, just for a moment.

Kaiba sat again, folding slowly back down into seiza like an origami bird. Jounouchi saw his thighs tremble. He was moving forward before he could stop himself, quickly and robotically, right in the middle of another speech someone had begun to make. The woman faltered as Jounouchi bent to Kaiba’s ear and said, in as low and steady of a voice as he could manage with his entire body singing in pain, “Excuse me, Kaiba-sama. There’s a call waiting for you. It’s important.”

He almost expected Kaiba to wave him off, but instead Kaiba half-turned to him, and Jounouchi saw how pale he was, how dark and pinched his eyes had become. He gave a short, curt nod, and rose. The woman who’d been speaking said hesitantly, “Kaiba-shachou?” but he motioned for her to continue and said, “I’ll just be a moment, Ueno-san. Continue.”

Jounouchi watched him get up with a strange kind of hunger churning inside him. And when Kaiba began to walk out of the room, Jounouchi overtook him and found the nearest waitress, feeling like he was moving through molasses, or floating through a dream.

“Excuse me, do you have a private room available? _Kaiba-sama_ ,” and he emphasized the name and honorific, “has to take a call, and must not be disturbed.”

She gave him a startled look, but her eyes darted over his shoulder, found Kaiba, and widened in recognition. She said, “Ah—of course. Right this way,” and led them to an unoccupied room with a door that locked, motioning them inside.

Vaguely, Jounouchi saw Isono tailing them through the restaurant, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was only doing his job, after all. When the door closed behind them, and they were left alone in the small room with its low round table and flat cushions, Jounouchi turned, slid his palm against the nape of Kaiba’s neck, and crushed their mouths together.

It wasn’t what he’d been intending to do. He been intending to take his hands, or his thin wrists, and just hold onto them for dear life. But the itch had pulled like a fishhook in his sternum, and he saw Kaiba _looking_ at him with something he didn’t know how to name, seething and desperate, and now they were kissing—strong, deep, heavy kisses, over and over, and Kaiba’s hands were in his hair and his long body was pressed against his, and Jounouchi pushed him greedily up against the door in a dizzying burst of hunger. The closeness and pressure and contact felt so fucking good and right that he could think of absolutely nothing else but touching as much of him as possible.

He panted against Kaiba’s mouth and ran his lips over his jaw and his neck and tasted the sweat that had gathered as he’d been kneeling, strangely sweet on his tongue. He wanted to taste everything, he wanted all of Kaiba’s skin, he wanted to touch all of him, his outsides and his insides, all at once. And he knew that was _insane_ , that he was out of control, out of his mind, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop or care.

The clothes between them felt horrible and wrong and he wanted them all off. He unbuttoned Kaiba’s suit jacket and yanked up his turtleneck from the waistband of his trousers to expose more skin, and Kaiba let him.

It was the most of Kaiba he’d ever seen. Even living with the man, he’d only ever caught a glimpse of his neck and collarbone, and hands and his bare feet—never anything more, even if he’d _felt_ the skin of his bare lower back, that tempting slice that had nearly driven him to seek out more, to put his lips to Kaiba’s throat, to inhale the vibrant living warmth. It was a revelation to see it. He needed to touch, taste, all of it.

He ran his hands against the hard muscles of Kaiba’s abdomen and felt them twitch and flex beneath his palms. His thumb caught on a nipple, stiff, and he shoved the turtleneck up even further so he could fasten his mouth to it. Kaiba hissed and grabbed the back of his head, but kept him there, let him suck, before tugging roughly on his hair and drawing him back up. Jounouchi groaned; he was so hard, he couldn’t think. He just _wanted._

“Quiet,” Kaiba hissed at him, in between frantic kisses, and Jounouchi just nodded dumbly and fumbled the clasp and zipper to his pants, his eyes fixed on the bulge in Kaiba’s suit trousers, the swell of a cock trapped twitching against his hip. His heart thudded like a drum in his chest; his fingers moved to Kaiba’s belt. He wanted it in his mouth and inside him; he wanted his own cock inside Kaiba, pressed or shoved into whatever hole would take it.

He leaned back up to Kaiba’s mouth and pushed their hips together, bared now, and the extra burst of contact made him shudder and whine. He felt Kaiba’s body arch against his, felt his cock slide against his, hot and wet with pre-come. Then Kaiba shoved him back and began to sink to his knees, and Jounouchi’s entire body hummed like a plucked string.

He put one hand on the door in front of him, curling over Kaiba’s head, looking down at him, his other hand tight in his hair, fingers clawed against his scalp. Kaiba’s mouth closed over the head of his cock and Jounouchi couldn’t believe the rush of pleasure and heat, couldn’t believe any of this was happening. He felt Kaiba’s tongue lick against him and felt the incredible wetness of his mouth and watched his cock disappear past his lips, deeper and deeper, until he could feel Kaiba’s _throat_ constrict around him. Fucking _fuck_ , didn’t he have a gag reflex? Didn’t he care that he was on his knees? For _Jounouchi_ , for someone he hated? And then the wild impossible thought hit Jounouchi like a ten-ton truck, enough to make his vision swim: had he done this before?

A surge of incredulous jealousy overtook him. Who was the asshole who’d had Kaiba’s mouth on their cock before Jounouchi, who’d _dared_ touch him; he was gay, and he’d never said? Well, of course he’d never said, of course he was fucking _gay_ — 

“Kaiba-sama?” came Isono’s voice on the other side of the door, along with a discreet knock.

Jounouchi’s heart gave a horrible lurch of fear.

But instead of answering, Kaiba drew him deeper and swallowed, so the muscles of his throat squeezed down on the head of Jounouchi’s dick, fucking perfect and incredible. It was too much. He came helplessly in a brutal burst of white-hot ecstasy that drenched his entire body in heat, hips bucking into Kaiba’s mouth, against his wet curling tongue, biting down hard on his knuckles to stay quiet.

When he came to, he was panting and staring sightlessly at the door in front of him, dazed. Kaiba was still kneeling before him—his forehead pressed to Jounouchi’s thigh, breath puffing out against Jounouchi’s softening cock.

“Kaiba-sama, if you don’t respond, I’ll have to come in.”

“Just a minute, Isono,” he said, and his voice was remarkably steady and unbroken for a man who’d just had a dick in his mouth.

There was no answer.

Kaiba got to his feet. Jounouchi looked down and saw with a dizzying jolt that he was no longer hard, and there was a wet streak of semen across the wooden floor where he’d been kneeling. He’d come when—while he was—Jounouchi’s mind boiled and sloshed. He felt like he was trapped in a glass jar; a disembodied brain floating in brine. He blinked but it didn’t help. Everything was glazed and good and warm and horrible. He was staring at Kaiba’s _come._

“Fuck,” he said, hoarse. The worst part was, he didn’t even feel guilty, or ashamed, or horrified. He wanted it all over again.

Kaiba put himself away and pulled up his zip. They weren’t touching anymore. He felt the loss like a hole had been carved out of his chest. It made him angry. He could tell Kaiba was about to slip back into his cold, unaffected, stubborn shell, and that made him even angrier. Kaiba wasn’t allowed to shove this away and forget about it.

He darted in and kissed him again, punishingly hard, feeling Kaiba’s mouth open against his in aborted protest. Their tongues brushed, and Jounouchi felt the spark fire all the way down his spine. He could keep kissing Kaiba forever; he felt like he could devour him. He felt, insanely, hysterically, like he’d become the richest man on Earth, like he owned him, like they owned each other.

“This isn’t over,” he promised him, before pulling back and doing up his own fly. “Go tell them you have to leave.”

Kaiba’s eyes were dark and furious and more blue than he had ever seen them, but he said nothing. He combed his hair back into place, wiped his wet, red mouth with the back of his hand, and nodded.

*

In the car, Kaiba kept a hand on the back of his neck for the whole ride, his thumb brushing against his nape in lazy, shivering sweeps, and Jounouchi sat, hard again, slowly stroking himself through his pants, staring hazily at him and thinking of nothing but his mouth. When they arrived he adjusted his cock into a more comfortable position, and took off his jacket so he could drape it over his lap as he walked.

They went through the servants’ entrance and right up to their bedroom, and Jounouchi toppled Kaiba into the bed and kissed him.

They kissed for a long time, simply luxuriating in it, in being able to take their time, in the constant skin-to-skin contact. Jounouchi pushed his erection into Kaiba’s thigh, which had been levered between his legs, and rode it languorously, nipping at Kaiba’s lips and tongue, drowning in him and the way he felt: brually, horribly perfect.

Then he pulled back and said, “I’m going to fuck you,” and Kaiba froze like a deer in the headlights.

He didn’t say _no_. He didn’t say anything. Jounouchi saw the hunger and the anger and a bright spark of genuine fear in Kaiba’s expression and realized he wanted it desperately and didn’t trust himself to speak, because he might ruin it. He didn’t know _how_ he knew it, but—he knew.

There wasn’t any lube, of course there wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. Jounouchi used his mouth and his tongue and his fingers, and it wasn’t all that different from the women he’d slept with, except it took a little more time: but he only got the tip in before everything threw itself into a burning cacophony of color and feeling and he came, helplessly, overwhelmed with an incredible sense of connection and rightness.

He didn’t get soft, or tired. He fucked Kaiba until they were both coming dry, with scratches all over him from Kaiba’s nails, and bruises from where they’d collided, and suck marks from Kaiba’s mouth and his sharp teeth. The room stank of come and magic and sweat, and outside the windows, stars shone bright as headlights in the dark velvet blanket of the sky. Nothing had ever felt more right and good; nothing had ever felt more, and less, like sex. He was sure it never would again. Not with anyone else.

*

Jounouchi was wearing one of Kaiba’s turtlenecks beneath the suit jacket, so Isis couldn’t see the mess of hickeys all over his throat, but he felt them pull each time he moved. And he was pretty sure she knew, anyway. She always did.

She was standing right there before them, as if she really _were_ there, and not just a Solid Vision hologram from Kaiba’s absurdly advanced network of projectors. She was a stunning woman, burnished and golden, almost ethereal in her long white linen dress; she must have been making the call from somewhere outside, because a light breeze was tossing her hair, and sunlight was glinting off her many bangles.

But Jounouchi felt absolutely nothing for her.

“You will have to wear them at all times,” she said, her accent flowing like water over the Japanese words, lovely and low. “So even if you haven’t consummated the marriage, you will be able to travel apart from one another. The magic of the knot cannot be reversed, but wearing these rings will allow you both to return to your normal lives.”

They were made of gold and blood-red jasper, carved with delicately spread wings, flung out from a small engraving of the same knot they had both touched what felt like months ago.

Jounouchi picked one up from the little wooden box that had been mailed all the way from Egypt and slid it onto his middle finger. It fit perfectly. He took it off and slid it onto his thumb, and still, it fit perfectly. He squinted at it and felt it thrum, warm like sunlight against his skin. He wasn’t sure he wanted to wear it on his hand. No—he wanted it on a chain against his chest, where the itch was. Used to be. And that way, nobody would see. Nobody would know.

He looked up and watched with a strange tense feeling in his gut as Kaiba slowly slid the band down his left ring finger. He flexed his hand and stared at it for a long moment, frowning, and then promptly appeared to forget it was even there.

“Thank you, Isis,” he said, looking back up at her. But there was no real gratitude in his voice: the words were merely a formality, cool and clinical. A dismissal.

She inclined her head. “I wish you both the best,” she said. “Until next time.”

Her image flickered away.

“People are gonna ask questions,” Jounouchi said, blankly. There would be photographs, articles in trashy gossip magazines, forums inundated with conspiracies and comments, little pixelated screenshots of Kaiba’s hand. “About who you married.”

“They can ask,” Kaiba said dryly, dismissively, and Jounouchi heard the unspoken childish addendum: _I’ll never tell._

Jounouchi realized with a dull, ugly thrill that this was it, this was his life now: even if he got married to some girl for real, even if he settled down and started a family, he’d always be bound to Kaiba. Until he died. Or until one of them did. Or—even after that, maybe.

“What are you gonna tell Mokuba?”

“Nothing,” said Kaiba. “He already figured it out. And then he called Isis himself to confirm.”

Of course he had. “Right.”

“I assume you don’t need me to tell you that you’re fired.”

Jounouchi snorted. “You can’t fire me; I quit.”

He walked to the door. Ten feet, twenty feet, no pain. He felt exactly as if he were still standing right next to Kaiba; his presence was constant, almost tangible, a formless shadow that would follow him everywhere he went. He didn’t know what to say. The problem had been fixed; they’d each go back to their lives, to their separate worlds, to hating each other. Only now Jounouchi had more cash in the bank than he’d ever had in his entire life, and a letter of recommendation that could probably get him any job he’d ever want—and a permanent invisible leash tying him to one of the people he disliked most in the world, forever.

“Well,” he said, pausing at the double doors, though he didn’t know why. Something held him back; made him glance over his shoulder, back to the cold man at his cold desk. His—husband. “See you around, Kaiba.”

“Not if I can help it,” Kaiba said sharply, immediately, and didn’t even look at him.

Jounouchi tongued his teeth, huffed a tiny laugh, and nodded to himself. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. If Kaiba wanted the last word, he could have it. Just like he had everything else. 

He should’ve just left.

So at last, Jounouchi turned, pushed open the doors, and left.


End file.
